Harper Beeland

Class of 2020
Major — Undeclared
Hometown — Chattanooga, Tennessee

I hail from Chattanooga, Tennessee, which seems like New York City compared to Gambier. I forget how to do long division sometimes, but I know Bill Evans and every episode of "Shameless" like the back of my hand. In terms of academic interests, I’m big on creative writing, but I also like clouds, so the way I see it, the possibilities are endless.

In the real world, one thing affects another until it eventually comes full circle. That’s how the liberal arts curriculum teaches Kenyon students to think; learning is not about retaining information from a textbook and spitting it back out again, but rather realizing a subject’s real-life connections and applications.

You won’t find a student at Kenyon who doesn’t look forward to the next semester, even among those who don’t get into every course they had hoped for. Everyone acknowledges that there is no such thing as a boring class at Kenyon.

Over the past few months, there had been the occasional cloud looming over my head and making me question how I would ever survive as an adult. But I saw then that if I had managed to resolve my bicycle dilemma, I was going to be just fine.

I couldn’t discount the machine that had brought me to that square in the first place. I glanced down and watched as the evening sun glinted off the bike’s frame so perfectly, and suddenly, I couldn’t help but think, “Is this a date?”